1. Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Heavenly Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. The message from God’s Word as we celebrate the Festival of the Reformation is taken from John 8:31-36 and Romans 3:19-28, it’s entitled, “There’s a Cure for the Diagnosis!” Dear brothers and sisters in Christ.
2. Nobody likes the doctor's office. We put off the appointment and tell ourselves the lump is probably nothing and the cough will clear up on its own. Some of us handle the check-engine light by covering it with a piece of electrical tape. The fear isn't really of the doctor. It's of the diagnosis. If I don't know, the thinking goes, it can't hurt me. And in our sinful nature, we do the very same thing with our souls. We live by lies. Sometimes we are deceived, and sometimes, if we're honest, we are happy to be deceived. Adam and Eve hid among the trees rather than face the Lord (Gen 3:8). David confessed that when he kept silent about his sin, his bones wasted away (Ps 32:3). We would rather not know, and so we avoid the church, the Word, and the pastor, because the Word says things we don't want to hear.
3. That brings us to the lie that has settled over our whole culture, and sadly into many churches too. Sociologists Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton studied the faith of American young people and gave it a name: Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. They write about this in their 2005 book, “Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers.” It is a mouthful, but you will recognize it right away. It says that God exists and wants us to be good and nice to one another. It says the central goal of life is to be happy and feel good about yourself. It says God doesn't need to be particularly involved in our lives except when we need him to solve a problem, like a divine butler or a cosmic therapist. And it says that good people go to heaven when they die. Notice what's missing. There is no sin that actually separates us from a holy God, no wrath, no cross, no blood, no Savior, and no need for one. It is a faith with no diagnosis, and a faith with no diagnosis can offer no cure. It tells a dying man he's doing fine, and it keeps the waiting room full of people who feel good until the moment they don't.
4. Scripture will not play along. St. Paul says that "whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God" (Rom 3:19). Every mouth stopped. No excuses and no "but I'm basically a good person." "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Rom 3:23). Jesus says it just as plainly: "Everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin" (Jn 8:34). Not a person with a few bad habits, but a slave. Jeremiah says that the heart is "deceitful above all things, and desperately sick" (Jer 17:9). That is the diagnosis, and it is terminal. No self-improvement plan, no positive thinking, and no amount of being nice can treat it, because the disease isn't on the surface. It is in the heart. This is what the Law is for. It is the X-ray, and it tells the truth so that we will stop pretending.
5. Now here is the good news, and it is very good news: the Great Physician makes house calls. When the Pharisees grumbled that Jesus ate with sinners, he answered, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners" (Mk 2:17). Dear friends, if you came in here today thinking you were well, I'm sorry to say that you'll have to leave without an appointment. But if you came in sick and sinful, weary and weighed down, then you are exactly the patient he came for. And notice his treatment. He does not hand us a prescription and wish us luck. He takes the disease upon himself. "He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree… By his wounds you have been healed" (1 Pet 2:24; Isa 53:5). The physician becomes the patient. We are "justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood" (Rom 3:24–25). The cure is not our work, and it is not our feelings. It is the blood of Christ, given and shed for you, and delivered to you in the water of Baptism, in the words of Absolution, and in the Supper, where he says, "This is my blood… poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins" (Mt 26:28). As the psalmist says, he "forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases" (Ps 103:3).
6. That is what Martin Luther rediscovered, and it is what the Reformation was about. It was never about a monk who was angry at the Church. It was about a troubled conscience that heard the diagnosis and found no cure in the religion of his day, until the Word of God opened to him: "The righteous shall live by faith" (Rom 1:17). Justification is by grace alone, through faith alone, on account of Christ alone, as Scripture alone declares. "For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast" (Eph 2:8–9). No one may boast, not the medieval pilgrim, not the modern moralist, and not the pastor in the pulpit.
7. But we are not finished, because the Reformation is not a once-and-done event in 1517. The very first of Luther's Ninety-Five Theses says, "When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, 'Repent,' he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance." The whole life. Because the old Adam doesn't die quietly. He keeps creeping back toward the comfortable lie, in the world and in the Church, and yes, in us. That is why our Small Catechism teaches that Baptism means the Old Adam in us is to be drowned daily by contrition and repentance, and that a new man should daily emerge and arise to live before God in righteousness and purity forever. The Church is always in need of reformation, not by inventing new teachings to suit the times, but by returning again and again to the Word that diagnoses and heals. Whenever a church trades the cross for a gospel of "be nice and feel good," she needs reforming. And whenever you or I begin to trust our own goodness, we need reforming too.
8. Martin Luther’s comments at the conclusion of the Large Catechism speak well to our need to receive Christ’s forgiveness, especially from the Lord’s Supper, so write’s Luther: “For here [in the Sacrament Jesus] offers to us the entire treasure which He has brought for us from heaven, and to which He invites us also in other places with the greatest kindness, as when He says in St. Matthew 11, 28: Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Now it is surely a sin and a shame that He so cordially and faithfully summons and exhorts us to our highest and greatest good, and we act so distantly with regard to it, and permit so long a time to pass [without partaking of the Sacrament] that we grow quite cold and hardened, so that we have no inclination or love for it. We must never regard the Sacrament as something injurious from which we had better flee but as a pure wholesome, comforting remedy imparting salvation and comfort, which will cure you and give you life both in soul and body. For where the soul has recovered, the body also is relieved. Why, then, is it that we act as if it were a poison, the eating of which would bring death? To be sure, it is true that those who despise it and live in an unchristian manner receive it to their hurt and damnation; for nothing shall be good or wholesome to them, just as with a sick person who from caprice eats and drinks what is forbidden him by the physician. But those who are sensible of their weakness, desire to be rid of it and long for help, should regard and use it only as a precious antidote against the poison (of sin) which they have in them. For here in the Sacrament you are to receive from the lips of Christ forgiveness of sin which contains and brings with it the grace of God and the Spirit with all His gifts, protection, shelter, and power against death and the devil and all misfortune.”
9. So don't be afraid of the diagnosis. The One who tells you the truth is the One who is the Truth, and Jesus says, "If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free… So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed" (Jn 8:31–36). Free from the lies, free from the fear of the doctor's office, and free from death itself. There is a cure for the diagnosis, and his name is Jesus. Come to him, and live. Now the peace of God that passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, until life everlasting. Amen.
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